


Real Isn't How You Are Made

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: A-Babies Vs. X-Babies
Genre: Bucky Bear - Freeform, Gen, Schmoop, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, baby cap, velveteen bucky, velveteen rabbit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but <em>really</em> loves you, then you become Real."<br/>~<cite>The Velveteen Rabbit</cite></p>
            </blockquote>





	Real Isn't How You Are Made

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anonymouse on tumblr, who asked for kid!Steve/Bucky Bear: "Love me."

He doesn't know what to expect when they pick him up. The other toys tell him he'll be _home_ , he'll be _loved_ , but he doesn't know what that means; home has always been the shelf above the sewing machine, with the other toys.

He's afraid they're going to put him in a box, but they don't; they stick a bow to his belly and sit him under the big tree. They turn out all the lights, but he's not scared of the dark. There are other toys here, too, but except for the dump truck (which has no conversation beyond "vroom vroom" at the moment) they're all wrapped up and quiet.

In the morning (he guesses--it's still dark outside), a little boy comes running into the room, stumbling a little in his blue footie pajamas. The little boy heads right for him, past the dump truck and the fancy wrapped boxes and the stocking heavy with fruit and candy. 

"Bucky Bear!" the boy says, holding him up and then pulling him in tight for a hug. 

Yes, he thinks, that is my name. This is my boy, and this is my home.

Bucky's boy is named Steve and he likes to play soldiers when he's not coloring or doing finger paints or pretending to read books (he tells Bucky stories and Bucky listens and learns as best he can), and he keeps Bucky at his side or in his lap all the time. Sometimes, they fight the green soldiers, and it's just him and Steve against a battalion, and sometimes, they fight the little green three-eyed aliens, but they always win and save the day. 

Steve builds an army of bears over the years--Private Bear and Captain Bear and General Bear--but Bucky Bear is the only one he tucks up against his side when he sleeps, when he's sick, when he's scared. It's Bucky he whispers to in the middle of the night and early in the morning, about everything he wants to see and do and be.

Even after Steve gets a big boy bed, and then later, when all the other bears move to a shelf in the closet, he keeps Bucky Bear with him. Bucky's worn in some places, and the buttons on his coat have been replaced a few times, but it's not until Snotty Scotty from across the street kidnaps him that he loses his arm.

Steve fights to get him back, and Steve's mom sews Bucky's arm back on as best she can, but she's a nurse, not a seamstress, and the stitches are big and gray and loose and ugly. Bucky's afraid it means Steve won't love him anymore, but Steve says it just makes him stronger. He makes his babysitter embroider a star on Bucky's shoulder to match the one on Steve's favorite footie pajamas.

Bucky knows the day is coming when he gets put away like the other bears and baby toys, relegated first to the shelf in the closet and then later, to a box in the attic. Everything is dark and the other toys quickly tire of hearing him recount his adventures as Steve's most beloved toy and how Steve will come for him, the way he always has before. But Steve doesn't come--he's older now, and plays with his bike and his Legos and his art supplies more than his army men, and he doesn't come looking for his bears at all. Bucky quiets down then, and begins to forget the details, though he'll always remember what it felt like to belong to someone, to be loved, and to love someone who belonged to him.

Not every toy gets that, he knows, and most baby toys never get it for long enough to become real, but he thinks he came the closest of any toy he knows. 

He doesn't know how much time has passed, how long he's been asleep, when someone opens the box. It's Steve, and he's all grown up, tall and handsome, like Bucky always knew he would be. He looks down into the box and touches each toy gently, with a small smile on his face, until he finally comes to Bucky. Steve takes him out of the box and hugs him briefly, and Bucky wishes he was big enough to hug Steve back, that he had arms and legs like a real person instead of a toy bear, and he wishes Steve felt the same way. If a toy bear could cry, Bucky would at that moment, and he never cried once, not even when his arm got torn off that time, but he can't, so he doesn't.

Steve puts him back in the box and takes it to the local shelter, where the kids will be happy with old, worn, secondhand toys, and Bucky hopes he finds someone who loves him, even though he knows no one could ever love him as much as Steve did.

At the last minute, though, Steve opens the box and takes Bucky out before he gives the other toys away. He smiles sheepishly and says, "It's always been you and me, Buck. I don't think I could make it without you." 

And Bucky wants to say, Me, too, but he's a toy bear who can't actually talk to anyone but other toys, so he doesn't. But, oh, he wants to so much he can almost taste the words on his pink felt tongue.

Steve tucks him into his jacket and leaves him in the car while he goes on his errands, and then he gets distracted and Bucky falls asleep there in the backseat.

He wakes up, startled and flailing, and rolls off the seat onto his knees. He has _knees_. This is a new thing, and he's still trying to get his head around it when the sun is blocked by a shadow.

Steve is looming over him, frowning. "Who are you? What are you doing in my car?"

And Bucky Bear, who's not a bear anymore but a real boy (man, really), blinks and points to the star tattooed on his scarred left shoulder. "It's me," he says in a hoarse voice that sounds just like the one in his head all these years, that Steve only pretended to hear. "It's Bucky."

Steve blinks, and Bucky knows how crazy it sounds, because he was a _toy bear_ up until a few hours ago, and now he's a full grown _person_ , but Steve knows him, Steve _believes_ him, because Steve _loves him_ and he loves Steve, and that's all they really needed to make Bucky's wish come true.


End file.
